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The hotel has an appropriately grand entrance in a projecting near-central bay, with steps up through ornate ironwork supporting a glass canopy. It has a mansard roof, and Dobson has made a feature of pedimented dormers. According to Elaine Denby, all this puts the hotel among a "small group of pioneering railway hotels" which demonstrate a "transition from neo-classical to the beginnings of revivalism." More specifically, Denby writes that here John Dobson "moved towards a more sophisticated French Renaissance revival treatment well suited to the character of northern stonework." Contrasting the hotel with the more Italianate Royal Station Hotel recently built in Hull, Denby continues, "Some Roman Renaissance details may be recognised in the rustication and the window pediments, but Parisian ideas show in the mansard roof and central pavilion, speaking more of the Louvre than of the Palazzo Farnese" (48). Most of the original 10-bay building is shown above. While greatly increasing the number of rooms, from 50-133, the late Victorian extension was sympathetic to the original design.